Originally Posted by
Totaltotemic
There was nothing wrong with the theme and the bosses in ToC. It was... well... literally everything else about the raid that made it awful.
1) Released far too soon after Ulduar but with much better gear. Why fight through the first 6-7 bosses in Ulduar so you can progress on Firefighter or hard mode General when you can just jump to ToC and get free gear that was better?
2) The Argent Tournament. While it made sense thematically with the overall expansion story, as a daily hub it is easily the worst daily hub to ever be introduced in a mid-expansion patch (compare to IQD, Firelands dailies, Isle of Thunder). The raid being associated with all of that cheapens the experience.
3) No trash. As much as we find trash annoying at times, the lack of trash entirely meant that you slammed your face into one boss, killed it, then immediately were on another. There was no break, no winding down in tension. The lack of trash lead to quick clear or grueling progression, which lead to clearing as many lockouts per week as possible because the whole place could be done in an hour per lockout. Some guilds killed 10 man normal, 25 man normal, and 10 man hard mode all in the same day to get gear for 25 man ToGC.
4) The 4 lockouts. I just covered this a bit, but that wore on people more than anything else, and was the sole ignition for the debate on whether 10 and 25 man should even have separate lockouts at all. I look back on ToC and see myself killing the same bosses 2 or 3 times a week on the same character, which was just plain irritating by the end of it.
5) Limited attempts. Progression is not fun when that one person that wipes the whole raid from a mistake doesn't just cost you time, but also potential loot and potentially even the chance to fight bosses at all. The inability to simply throw attempts at bosses also lead to the "why not" reasoning for farming 2-3 other lockouts each week, it's not like you could spend that time on real progression anyways.
6) Anub'arak. Not the fight itself, mind you, but everything else surrounding the fact that the fight was there. The Lich King coming in only reminded us how cheap his appearances were all expansion (to the point of cartoonish). The fact that Anub'arak was still alive reminded us of his cheap "demise" in a boring 5 man. Dropping down brought up painful reminders of the rumors of an entire Azjol-Nerub daily zone instead of the lame Tournament, and how arguably the most important part of Northrend itself was simply ignored in the expansion. Anub'arak being there in the circumstances that he was served as a painful reminder of how botched the patch cycle in WotLK was rather than an epic boss.
Beasts, JARAXXUS, Faction Champions, Twin Valkyrs, and Anub'arak were all great boss fights, but they had by far the worst surroundings of any tier in the game. It's not that ToC itself was bad, it was that the raiding tier as a whole was awful from a larger perspective.